Monday, September 16, 2013

Slowing Down, Should I Laugh or Cry?, Dear Miss Lee

1. I tried to be in a hurry, but it was not meant to be. Stuck behind a road crew vehicle on a narrow, country road, creeping along at five miles per hour for twenty minutes, I rolled down the windows and accepted my fate. "This isn't so bad", I said to myself. I was moving at the pace of a walk. I could smell the hay, I smelled the cows, and I got a whiff of some distant wood smoke. I saw tangles of purple, pink, and white morning glories climbing all over the road bank. The purple ones had a five-pointed star of darker purple in the middle. I glanced up the driveways of homes I would otherwise speed right by. I noticed rocks and mailboxes and homey entrance ways.I was forced to slow down and I liked it.
2. Thirty Kindergartners are in constant motion. I liken it to trying to contain the overflowing suds of an out-of-control washing machine. It's hysterically funny, but forebodes problems at the same time.
2a. One girl asked me if I'm a grandmother. She said she could tell because I wore glasses.
3. "Dear Janelle, I can tell we shall have another long year together."

Translation: Miss Lee I am sorry that I been so weird yesterday and I just wanted to say I am sorry for spitting in Carson's face.

"The world is fairly studded and strewn with pennies cast broadside from a generous hand. But who gets excited by a mere penny?...It is dire poverty indeed when a man is so malnourished and fatigued that he won't stoop to pick up a penny. But if you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is in fact planted with pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days. It is that simple. what you see is what you get."